<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>molten honey by tkreyesevandiaz</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29307237">molten honey</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkreyesevandiaz/pseuds/tkreyesevandiaz'>tkreyesevandiaz</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>9-1-1 (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Domestic Fluff, First Kiss, Fluff, Introspection, M/M, POV Evan "Buck" Buckley, Poetic, Pre-Relationship Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Realization, Soft Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, ambiguous timeline</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:13:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,024</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29307237</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkreyesevandiaz/pseuds/tkreyesevandiaz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Buck thinks some realizations come slow, like molten honey.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>237</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>molten honey</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It's been a hot minute since I wrote fluff lmao.</p><p>Cookie, this is for you &lt;3 I know I've been writing a lot of angst lately so...here you go!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Buck thinks some realizations come slow, like molten honey.</p><p>This isn’t like any of the realizations he’s come across in the last few years — the ones that struck him like lightning and left him bolted to the floor, charred and full of fatal electricity that felt like he could shock anyone who touched him. </p><p>Those times, it just seemed like everyone was walking straight past him without seeing him, and he couldn’t <em> move </em>around that, away from that. Time had pressed the tools in his hands to unscrew himself from the floor and step forward, but the scars of those realizations are still embedded into his skin.</p><p>This one won’t leave so much as a mark on his person, but he thinks his soul might be branded by it forever.</p><p>He really thinks that this realization should’ve come a lot earlier. It doesn’t make sense for him to be rooted in place by the strength of conviction settling over him at the sight of Eddie moving around Buck’s kitchen...a sight he’s seen more times than he cares to count.</p><p>Maybe there’s a magic number to all this. A number of times where he’s meant to witness a reiteration of the same event until he finally <em> gets </em> it. Until it finally clicks that this is his, he’s meant to have this, he's been <em>made </em>to have this and that he’d better take it while he can.</p><p>Buck feels like a key’s been unlocked in his mind, a trapped feeling now free from whatever inhibitions had been holding him back. Holding <em> both </em>of them back, if Buck’s not mistaken.</p><p>It’s easier to be standing here, at the base of his stairs, in the dark than it is to be faced with all of it during broad daylight. He’s not as vulnerable here, parts of his body cast in shadows, leaving less of him exposed to wither away should he be rejected. </p><p>In daylight, he doesn’t get the privilege of hiding anything away. The world is far too real when the sun comes up than when it goes down, and maybe that’s a realization all in itself. Life moves too fast during the day, but when night encloses all of them, it seems that maybe time has come to enough of a standstill that they can steal these moments for themselves.</p><p>Buck doesn’t want to feel like he’s stealing time to be with Eddie.</p><p>He thinks that Eddie’s a man that deserves to be loved in bold, brazen colors, spread across every canvas Buck can find with handprints and imprints of the words they’ve left unsaid. He doesn’t deserve to be hidden in the dark, doesn’t deserve to only be loved when night falls.</p><p>Buck wants to love Eddie in broad daylight.</p><p>For all the realizations that have crept over his mind over the past few years, he thinks this one is probably the one that’s impacted him the most, but has left him the least off-kilter. His world hasn't shifted beneath his feet, only clicked better into place with the last piece of their puzzle.</p><p>He remembers the day he’d finally accepted that Abby wasn’t coming back. It hadn’t felt nearly as safe as the realization he’s come to tonight. That realization had left him feeling like he’d swallowed something bitter, had left him strewn around in resigned pieces of himself. It’d felt like he was leaving the ghost of himself behind, right with all the others that Abby’s apartment had accumulated over the years.</p><p>He’s taken a ghost or two with him, too, tucked away in life lessons that Buck draws upon occasionally. </p><p>Realizing that he’s in love with Eddie tastes...sweet. Not enough to make his teeth hurt, but enough to bridge the gap between what Buck needs and what he wants from his partner in sticky strands that pull them together. It doesn’t shatter him to pieces, doesn’t make his heart speed up in his chest, doesn’t make fear wrap tight around him. Instead, there’s a security to this that Buck doesn’t remember ever having in his life.</p><p>He tries to pick up on the tune Eddie’s humming as he comes back to himself. Buck’s apartment is open enough that the trill sound almost echoes within its walls, but not enough to wake Christopher upstairs. Just enough to add a bit of liveliness to what Buck presumes to be almost artificial in its own right.</p><p>When he says that, he doesn’t mean that everything in this apartment is fake. But truth be told, Buck’s always been somewhat a believer in the “people make a home” theory, and he’s found it to be proven over and over again. </p><p>There are marks of the important people in his life all over the place. There’s a picture of him and Maddie on the shelf near his laundry room door. There’s an accompanying one of the 118 perched right there, along with a few faux plants that won’t die during Buck’s eccentric work schedule. </p><p>There are Christopher’s drawings all over the fridge, those magnets he’s obsessed with. His favourite juice pouches are sitting in the cabinet above the fridge, along with a secret chocolate stash that they’ve hidden from Eddie. There’s a drawer upstairs with clothes for the Diaz boys, and another one downstairs for Christopher to store some of his things so he doesn’t have to keep lugging them back and forth.</p><p>Yet, there’s a chill that encompasses his house until the people he loves walk in. Almost as if they drag sunlight in with them every time they come over, and suck it out when they leave.</p><p>Eddie’s pulled clothes from said drawer tonight as he pads around the kitchen, soft and rumpled from the hectic day. This is not like the moment they’d shared a year ago, in this very kitchen, where Eddie was dressed to the nines and Buck had simply thrown on an old hoodie. </p><p>This is different — vulnerable.</p><p>Vulnerable, delicate, fragile, spun glass — all these words that pop into his mind at the way Buck’s old college T-shirt falls loosely over Eddie’s shoulders that he probably never would’ve used for Eddie Diaz otherwise. Buck knows Eddie isn’t the type of man to allow himself to be vulnerable, isn’t the type of man to look like he could break.</p><p>He also knows that the world hasn’t given Eddie much choice but to close himself into steel-reinforced walls, arms tight around his son as he tries to protect him from everything he can. To protect himself, too, even if it’s the last thing he looks out for. Buck knows that even as fragile as Eddie may look in those oversized clothes, as many cracks and shatters that’ve decorated the man’s life, that he’s strong and sturdy. Buck doesn’t have to worry about falling through, doesn’t have to worry about catching himself on the shards of Eddie’s jagged edges.</p><p>Eddie protects the people he loves.</p><p>As he thinks this through, Eddie turns to see him standing there and gives him a smile that rocks another realization into him.</p><p>Buck’s made it past those walls. He’s stepped in with them, has stood shoulder to shoulder with Eddie for years to make sure no harm comes to them. </p><p>Eddie’s never let anyone else see him like this, without the armor he puts on every morning. Buck gets to see him before his defenses up, <em> has </em>seen him unguarded multiple times before the day casts its shadow over it.</p><p>And just like that, the third realization of the night crests over him, leaving him sluggish with the weight of it. </p><p>Eddie’s it for him.</p><p>He doesn’t know why he hasn’t thought of it before. No one else ever remembers the little things about him like Eddie does, like even <em> Christopher </em>does. The two of them make an effort to show Buck how important he is to them, and it’s in the little things. He knows that just like he’s got Eddie’s favourite beer sitting in his fridge, Christopher’s favourite foods tucked away in his pantry...the Diaz household has his own favourites there, too. Including the things that no one else eats.</p><p>Buck’s never been a man of purely words or action; it’s always been a combination of both. Slowly, over time, he’s lost faith in the power of simple words to keep people rooted to where they promise they’ll be. Now, he puts his belief in actions, into the evidence of these promises, and Eddie’s done his best to keep every single one they’ve laid down between them.</p><p>“You’ve been thinking awfully hard over there, Buck,” Eddie says, cocking his head, eyes roaming Buck’s expression as if he could dig deep to find out what it was. Buck thinks he probably could — take him apart piece by piece until he finds a reason for why Buck seems all over the place.</p><p>Eddie could do that. He knows Buck better than he knows himself sometimes. There have always been those moments where nothing seemed right, and a tiny, selfish part of him would wish that someone would fix it all for him. He’s had those moments since he was six, vying for his parents’ attention, at twelve watching Maddie fight with their parents, at eighteen not knowing what to do with the rest of his life, and now at thirty, with Atlas’ world resting on his shoulders some nights.</p><p>Eddie makes it better. He makes these moments into simple speed bumps instead of the mountains they look in Buck’s mind, simply by being there.</p><p>Eddie’s laughter rings out between them, soft and breathless. “You gonna let me in, Buck?”</p><p>How much further in does Eddie want to be? How much further is there left for him to encompass Buck's life.</p><p>Buck asks him this now, holding his breath as a variety of expressions flit across his best friend’s face.</p><p>Eddie, as a whole, is more expressive than anyone Buck’s ever known. He knows that he’s the one with the proverbial heart on his sleeve, but Eddie has a knack for saying a thousand things without saying anything at all. It’s in the crease of his forehead, the arch of his eyebrows, the light of his eyes and the twist of his mouth. </p><p>Buck thinks it’s a talent.</p><p>He reads all those expressions like a well-worn book as he stands there, not knowing quite where to put himself.</p><p>In the end, he makes himself move forward to where he always wants to be — by Eddie’s side. Eddie watches him approach, turning to face him with a gentle smile. </p><p>“You’re in, too, you know?” he says. The words don’t quite compute in Buck’s muddled mind, and sensing his confusion, Eddie taps two fingers over his own heart. “Here. You’re in here, too.”</p><p>It takes another minute for his mind to sift through what Eddie’s telling him, but when he figures it out, he stares at him wide-eyed. This is an outcome that he’s not prepared for.</p><p>In his mind, he’d just wanted to let Eddie <em> know </em>. This wasn’t something that belonged solely to him — his love for Eddie was not something he wanted to hide away, no matter how long it’s taken him to come to it. No matter how long that journey was, he doesn’t want to take another step without Eddie knowing.</p><p>Eddie laughs again, sweet and rich and not deprecating at all. “Buck, I’m right there with you. I promise.”</p><p>Eddie’s said his name three times tonight in just the past five minutes. Buck twists that number in his mind, traces over his best friend’s tone around the four letters in his mind. There’s an affection to the nickname that he’s never had before. Maybe with Christopher, who tacked on an extra letter to make his own name for Buck. But with Eddie, he hasn’t let himself believe it.</p><p>But just as he’s asked something of Eddie, Eddie’s asking something of him, too. He may look calm on the outside, but Buck’s put his fingers into the divots on the page of nervousness. He knows what Eddie looks like when he’s anxious, knows the way his eyes dim a little. He knows the way Eddie’s gripping the counter, and knows that Eddie’s scared that he’s thrown himself off a cliff with no one to catch him.</p><p>Buck would, without hesitation.</p><p>It’s funny; he was supposed to be the one to ball up all the energy, all the domestic moments between them and present them to Eddie with all the questions that have struck his mind tonight, one after the other. He was supposed to be the one to ask what exactly they’re doing here, why are they always stuck at a standstill with this, why can’t they finally take that leap.</p><p>Instead, it’s Eddie who’s answering all these questions Buck hasn’t even asked with a simple gesture, presenting a few questions of his own. So, he takes his turn in answering by stepping into Eddie’s space, relishing the way his shoulders drop as the tension leeches from them. </p><p>This close, Eddie has to tilt his head upwards to look him in the eye, but like this, Buck can see some of the trepidation fading. The same confidence he feels cementing in his core reflects itself in Eddie's eyes, and suddenly, the brief moment the world tipped on its axis skips over, ensuring they stay upright.</p><p>Buck drops his hands to Eddie’s waist tentatively, looking at the way his fingers fan out across the line of his body, even through the T-shirt. They fit together perfectly, just like Buck somehow thought they would. He stretches his hand across Eddie’s side, greedily trying to soak up as much as he can.</p><p>He explores this attachment, sliding his hands up to rest them on Eddie’s shoulders, tilting his head down. “You knew about this.”</p><p>“I hoped,” Eddie admits. “Couldn’t let myself believe it.”</p><p>Yeah, he gets that. He can’t really let himself believe that it’s Eddie’s skin under his hands, his pulse thrumming at the sides of Buck’s fingers, either. </p><p>Eddie hasn’t moved. He stays still and warm as Buck smooths a finger across his collar, fiddles with a stray curl of hair over his ears and moves up to touch his cheek. There’s no heat to this touch, only a careful exploration of all the things that make up his partner. He drags one finger, then two, then three until his palm is cupping Eddie’s face gingerly, cataloguing every expression.</p><p>Buck curls his other hand carefully around the back of Eddie’s neck, feeling the other man smile as he presses their lips together in a slow kiss. </p><p>He thinks, even while Eddie’s arm is hooking around his shoulders to pull him closer, fingers buried in his curls, that there are a lot of ways this kiss could go. It could be explosive, leaving only smouldering pieces of themselves in its wake. It could be gentle, like rain on an unbearably hot day. It could be passionate, leaving burning handprints on each other’s skin. It could be furious, leaving the regrets of wasted time between them.</p><p>Still, it’s none of those things, and simultaneously all of them at once. Eddie moves with him, fluid even as they press closer together, exchanging slow kisses under the low light of the kitchen where Buck can’t hide in the shadows.</p><p>This is what coming home feels like. There’s someone by his side to soldier through the day with, and to shoulder some of the burden at night. He <em> isn’t </em>alone, despite all his life has shown him.</p><p>He’s watched everyone he loves walk away from him, one after the other in quick succession until he was the only one left standing. He’s been the one people turn their backs to, knowing that Buck is incapable of sinking the knife into their spines no matter what they put him through.</p><p>He doesn’t think he has the strength to watch Eddie walk away from him, but he knows that Eddie has the same fears he does. Someone who knows how it feels to be left behind is never the first to walk away.</p><p>Buck has faith in himself this time. He’s always had faith in Eddie, and now...he has faith in <em> them </em>. He knows he’s found what he’s been looking for in Eddie and Christopher, and he’s never going to let it slip through his fingers. Not if he can help it.</p><p>“You deserve to be loved in daylight,” Buck tells him, the poetic words fumbling in his mouth, heavy and awkward but completely true. Eddie’s gaze goes unbearably soft as he leans forward to kiss the corner of his lips.</p><p>Somehow, that feels more intimate than anything else Buck’s ever done. </p><p>“You are daylight,” Eddie replies simply. His heart skips ahead of him at the clear affection in his voice. Buck smiles, tugging him forward into a proper kiss.</p><p>This kiss tastes like the realizations that’d come over him tonight — sweet and woody, like the jar of raw honey he’d been gifted one year. </p><p>“I love you.” Eddie’s the one to say it first, low and slow, just between the two of them. Buck repeats the words with no small amount of awe. </p><p>In the distance he’s covered from the staircase to where they’re standing now, against the center island, they’ve finally found the courage to take that single step remaining between friends and partners in every sense of the word.</p><p>This time, when Eddie wraps his hand around Buck’s to drag him upstairs, Buck thinks that this realization is molten for a reason. It burns its own path through the zig-zags of life, fluidly moving around then, sweetening everything in its path.</p><p>“I love you,” Buck tells him again as they settle down on either side of Christopher, Eddie’s hand tangling with his over the kid’s body. Now that he's said it once, he doesn't think he's ever going to stop and by the gentle expression on Eddie's face, the fondness in his eyes, its the same for him.</p><p>He proves it again when he says, “I love you, too.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope y'all liked this! :)</p><p>You can find me on Tumblr at <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/blog/zeethebooknerd">zeethebooknerd</a> or on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/tkreyesevandiaz">tkreyesevandiaz</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>